In Your Dreams
by BrookeGreene
Summary: Was it a dream or was it real? Post Living Doll. GSR


**Disclaimer**: If I owned it, the season finale would have ended with Sara being rescued, not "To Be Continued"

This is my first CSI fan fic that I've actually posted on here. I wrote a couple for _Friends_, but that doesn't really count. I do **_not _**want this story to happen on the show, I will throw things and send hate mail to tptb if it does.

Major thanks to two people; GSRfanatic25 for reading this over for me, I didn't want to go ahead and post it until at least one person had read it. Even bigger thanks to thegreatbluespoon, I told her my idea and she told me to put in a fic, so I did. Also, she came up with the Grissom smashing his office thing, and I stole it from her for this fic. She offered to read this, but didn't have the time, and I needed to post this before Thursday. Thanks, you guys rock.

Just a warning, don't read this unless you're a GSR shipper, if you ship something else or you just don't care, you won't like this fic at all. It's sort of post-Living Doll, more like post dead doll, but since we don't know what happens in that, I can't really call it that.

* * *

No matter where you were in the Las Vegas crime lab, you would have heard the sounds of smashing glass and loud swearing that were coming from Gil Grissom's office. The thing was, nobody really cared, everyone was numb to anything but their own misery, or, in Conrad Ecklie's case; glee.

Actually, even if anyone had cared about it, they wouldn't have dared mention it. Most people were too scared to approach Grissom's office, never mind go in and talk to him; he might "accidentally" throw something at them. Not that they would really blame him after what he'd just been through in the past 24 hours.

Grissom really didn't give a shit about anyone or anything right now. The love of his life was dead, and since he couldn't take out his anger on the one who had caused Sara's death, he was just going to have to smash everything in his sight. He picked up another case containing God-knows-what and threw it at the wall. Glass shards rained down everywhere, piercing the pale skin of his bare arms. Soon there was blood streaming down his arms, staining his shirt and pants. He looked down at his bloody hands.

Images of Sara flashed through his mind. Sara eating. Sara sleeping. Sara working a scene. Sara in a bloody heap on the desert floor underneath a red mustang.

"NO!" he yelled.

He had to stop thinking about her; she was gone, dead, never coming back. But he couldn't get those pictures out of his head, and he probably never would. For the rest of his life, he knew, he would be haunted by images of her beautiful face, covered in blood and dirt.

It wasn't fair, she was so young, so beautiful, and she'd been through more in the first 18 years of her life than most people did in a lifetime, why did she have to be the one to die? It should have been him; he was the one Natalie Davis wanted revenge on, not Sara. But nooo, the bitch wouldn't have been happy with simply _killing_ him, she had to rip out his heart and stomp on it first.

Gil picked up a glass case and was about to throw it when he saw what was in it; the cocoon he had sent Sara while he was on sabbatical. He couldn't even remember why he had gone to William's College; he should have stayed with Sara, where he had belonged. In fact, everything he had ever done or said to her seemed stupid now. Why had he rejected her time after time when all he wanted to do was take her in his arms and kiss her? Why had he told that murderer Dr. Lurie about his feelings for her and how he couldn't act on them, when he knew there was a chance she was listening? Why hadn't he asked her out the moment she showed up in Vegas, instead of six years later? And, the thing that was bugging him the most, why had he never told her just how much he loved her?

He'd been an idiot, he knew that now. Sara deserved so much better than him, but she waited for him anyway. Countless times, he'd been a total jerk to her, but she kept loving him, never giving up on the possibility that, maybe, someday he would realise he loved her too. It had taken several years and a few tragedies before he'd finally grown a pair and asked her to dinner, their first date. It had been wonderful. The food was delicious, the service was great, and the hours afterward at her place had been Heaven.

Grissom sank to his knees, sobbing uncontrollably, remembering everything he loved most about her. Her trademark smile that was always brightest when directed at him. The feel of her lean body in his arms and her soft lips lightly brushing against his. How she was just emotionally detached enough from cases that she didn't lose perspective, but didn't come off as unfeeling or cold. If he tried to list everything he loved about her, he would be there for days, because he loved everything about her, if he could change one thing, he wouldn't. Sara was perfect. _Was_. She had only been dead a few hours he was already using past tense, he hated himself for that.

A fluttering sound startled Grissom out of his reverie. He looked at the glass case he still held in his hands, a small but beautiful butterfly was breaking out of its chrysalis. The tears didn't stop, but he couldn't feel them streaming down his face anymore. He watched in awe as the butterfly made its first flight across the cage, stopping just in front of its face. It fluttered its wings at him, the way a woman would bat her eyelashes. If he hadn't known better, he might have thought that this creature was Sara reincarnated as a butterfly. But he did know better, reincarnation had never been scientifically proved, so in his mind, it wasn't real.

The butterfly was the closest thing he had to Sara. Sure, it was a bug, but it was _her_ bug that he had given to her months ago in the form of a cocoon. So he fed it sugar water and brought it flowers every day. He knew it was cruel to keep something like that in an enclosed space, but he wasn't about to let it free, so he bought a bigger case and occasionally letting it out to fly around his office, making sure it was back in its home before he opened his office door. Everyone was talking about him, asking if he was okay every single day. He just wanted to scream at them that, no, he wasn't _okay_ that he would never be _okay_ because Sara was dead, and nothing would ever be the same.

"It's been three months Gil," Catherine said to him one day, "You have to try to get over her, and move on with your life."

"How the hell am I supposed to do that?" Grissom had retorted, "It's _only_ been three months, I've known people who grieve for five years or more. I'm allowed to be sad Catherine, the love of my life died three months ago because of a serial killer's want for revenge against me. I'm allowed to grieve, and I know that if it was your boyfriend or husband you wouldn't be over them in three months. Besides, I'm not just sad that she's dead, I'm sad that she died without knowing how much I care about her. Do you know how it feels to know that your one true love never heard the words 'I love you' coming from your lips?"

Catherine's jaw dropped, "You never told Sara that you love her?"

"No," he replied sadly, "I never did, and I hate myself for it."

"Gil… I don't know what to say to that. If it's any consolation, I think it would have been fairly obvious that you loved her and she probably knew, even if she never actually heard you say it."

Grissom shook his head slowly and sadly, "It doesn't matter, I didn't love her enough to say it to her face."

"Don't say that!" Catherine snapped. Grissom looked up from his feet, startled, "You loved her more than I've ever loved anyone. Sure, you should have told her, but she loved you, waited for you all those years, I don't think she would hold it against you."

"We'll never know though will we? I'll never find out if she knew I loved her, or if she hated me for not telling her. She's dead, Catherine, she's gone."

Then he had retreated into his office to be with Sarah the butterfly. Sarah spelled with an 'h' because it wasn't fair to Sara's memory to name a butterfly after her. He only ever let himself cry when he was in the safety of his office, or at home, but when he let himself, he would cry buckets, soaking the carpet or sheets or whatever happened to be near him at that time. Sometimes it was Bruno who got the bath.

Grissom started having dreams about her. Dreams where they would get to the car and Sara would be alive, with only superficial cuts and scrapes. The car would be lifted off of her and he would take her hand, whispering words of love. They would kiss and hug, and cry tears of joy, not caring about anyone who was watching. He would wake up from these dreams, wishing he could go back and stay asleep forever, in a land where Sara wasn't dead and he wasn't too much of a coward to express his feelings. It was getting harder and harder to get up in the morning because when he got up, he would be reminded that she was dead. In the safety of his bed, he could pretend that the warm body next to him was his lover, not a dog.

Sometimes the dreams were nightmares where Sara hated him. She would survive being trapped under a car, only to laugh at his attempts to kiss her and proceed to make out with Nick or Greg, right in front of him. But, he decided, these dreams were better than reality, for at least there was a chance of reconciliation. In the real world, it wasn't possible. People didn't rise from the dead.

Everyone at work started to worry about Grissom. He went to crime scenes, collected evidence and solved cases per normal, but he had a ghostly look about him. Few people ever dared talk to him; they had seen him snap at people for no apparent reason. It was like being back in high school, everyone ignored him and he ignored everyone. The only people who tried talking to him were Catherine and the other members of the graveyard shift.

One night, he had a different dream. There was lots of white light. But it wasn't bright; it was soft, almost like a cloud. Sara was there, sitting on a bench. She beckoned to him with hand, and only then did he think it might be Heaven. For if there was a Heaven, that's where his Sara would be. He felt himself walk towards her and sit down on the bench. She had tears running freely down her face, and he reached out to wipe them away. But he couldn't touch her. It was as if there was a force field surrounding her, preventing anyone from getting too close.

"What is this place?" he found himself asking, "Am I in Heaven, am I dead?"

"No, you are not dead," Sara replied, sounding younger than he'd remembered, "As for what this place is, you have to decide that for yourself. It is what you want it to be."

"Can it be our house, six months ago?" he asked, knowing the answer already.

She looked up, deep into his eyes. The tears were flowing even faster now, and he realised that he too was crying.

"Nothing can change the past Gil." Sara told him, "If I could go back in time, I would go back before Natalie took me and tell you that I loved you."

"I knew that you loved me," a single tear dripped onto his shirt, "I never needed you to tell me that. It is _I_ that should have told _you_ that I loved you."

She lifted her hand from her lap and moved it toward him. When she was only a few inches away, she met resistance.

"The dead and the living are not meant to come into contact." She said sadly, "I can't touch you, and you can't touch me."

Grissom gave up trying to hold the tears in and sobbed into his hands. It just wasn't fair that she was right beside him and he couldn't touch her.

"I'll kill myself," he said in desperation, "Then I can come see you in this place and we'll be able to touch."

"You can't, too many people will miss you. And those who take their own life don't come here, only those whose lives were taken from them or ended naturally. You must wait, and when your time comes, you will come here and we can be together for eternity."

Grissom was confused now, "I thought this wasn't Heaven?"

"It is what you want it to be," Sara repeated.

She started to fade into the light.

"I don't have much time," she told him quickly, "I have to go soon. But I need you to do something for me."

"I'll do anything."

"I need you to let the butterfly you have called Sarah go free. Until then, part of my soul will still be with you and I won't be able to rest in peace." She was disappearing before Grissom's very eyes, "Please, just do this for me Gil. Just this one thing, I know you love me and you don't want to let that last little bit of me go, but I need you to do it. I love you…" and then she was gone.

He woke up in a bed that felt even emptier than it had before he went to sleep. Seeing Sara in his dreams hadn't helped him at all. If it was a dream anyway, Grissom wasn't quite sure it had only been that, but he didn't want to get his hopes up that Sara was really waiting for him somewhere.

Just a few months ago, if someone had told him he'd be seriously contemplating suicide, he would have recommended them to a good psychiatrist. Gil Grissom was not a suicidal man. At least he hadn't been a few months ago, before Sara had been kidnapped. Now, he didn't care about anything but seeing Sara again, and dying was the only way that could possibly happen. Yet he couldn't forget what Sara had told him; that people who took their own life didn't go to the same place. He didn't know whether to believe it or not, but one thing was for sure, he wasn't about to kill himself only to find out that it hadn't been a dream and he wouldn't get to see her again. He would have to suffer through without her and somehow find a way to live again. No. that didn't mean finding another woman, that was never going to happen as long as he lived, which hopefully wasn't going to be long. What it meant was coming out of his office every now and then, talking to someone other than Catherine and Brass.

He knew Sara's other friends were grieving too, and felt guilty for causing them pain. It was his fault after all; Natalie had killed her to get revenge on him. If he hadn't been so careless with Sara, if he hadn't touched her arm at that crime scene, she wouldn't have been taken.

However, when Grissom said this to Nick, he just shook his head and said that she would have found out sooner or later. It was obvious, he said, that there was something between them. Everyone had noticed, they just hadn't known that the two were a real couple; everyone thought that Grissom was too wrapped up in his work to do anything about his feelings, which were obviously pretty strong.

"You remember when Sara got suspended a couple years back?" Grissom asked.

"I remember hearing about it," Nick replied, "and I remember being mad at Ecklie for trying to make you fire him. I was mad at you at first too; I thought you were the one who suspended her. Then I heard what you did for her, and decided you were a good guy, to put your job on the line for her like that."

"That was when I first realised that I was in love with her. I was scared of losing her, and if she was fired I would probably never see her again."

"She would have made excuses to see you; she was in love with you, too. Wild horses wouldn't tear her away from you." Nick reassured.

"Maybe not, but a red Mustang did."  
After that, Nick seemed to avoid him. Greg and Warrick started getting annoyed too, only Catherine and Brass made an effort to talk to him anymore. It was probably just too hard to hear constant reminders that Sara was dead. Whenever someone said something about Sara, Grissom would say that she was "dead, gone, never coming back" and get death glares from those around him.

Even Ecklie wasn't making his usual snide comments these days. Instead he just watched silently with a sneer or his face. He appeared to respect that the graveyard shift was grieving for their lost team member and friend, so he stayed out of everyone's way. Of course, it could have just been that the last time he tried to interfere; Greg had called him an ass and told him to go to hell to be with his mother.

One day, Grissom drove the butterfly Sarah in its glass cage to the desert where Sara had been under the car. He stopped the car, got out and looked around. When he located the exact spot she's been found dead, he grabbed the cage and walked over to it. He remembered Sara's words: "I need you to let the butterfly you have called Sarah go free. Until then, part of my soul will still be with you and I won't be able to rest in peace." He had to do it, the dreaded act. There was no way he would ever forgive himself if he didn't do what Sara had asked of him.

He opened the cage and the butterfly flew out. He watched it flutter away until it was just a tiny speck in the bright sunlight. Surprisingly, he didn't feel like he had just lost the last thing he had left of the only woman he had ever loved. In fact, he felt relieved, like a huge weight had been lifted off of his shoulders. A feeling Sara hadn't got to feel before she died, because he hadn't saved her in time.

Well now he was sad, but he hadn't been happy since Sara died so sadness was a feeling Gil had grown accustomed to. He got back in the car and drove. He didn't know where he was going, but he couldn't stay at that evil place any longer and he couldn't go home. Home reminded him too much of her, home smelled like her and while he usually rejoiced in the fact that her scent lingered in his home, today it would drive him crazy. So he drove.

He ended up in a completely different part of the desert. There were hills and cliffs, and they went on for miles. When he stopped the car, he thought he saw fluttering wings, and got out to investigate. There they were, at the edge of a cliff, it looked like a butterfly. It looked like Sarah, but he couldn't be sure, it was a little ways away and butterflies were small. So he went closer, right to the edge of the steep drop. The wings were gone, and there were no other butterflies to be seen anywhere around, so he determined that it must have been his imagination, or wishful thinking.

Two distinctly feminine hands touched his shoulders and pushed. He was falling, falling down the steep two mile drop. But he wasn't afraid of dying, he wanted to die. Right before he hit the ground, he remembered Bruno, there would be no one left to take care of him. Maybe Brass or Catherine would take him, or maybe Nick. But he didn't worry about it too much; he was going to see Sara again. And that was all that mattered; everything was going to be all right.

Two hands were gently caressing his face; the same hands that had pushed him over the edge. He realised now that they belonged to Sara. He slowly opened his eyes and looked around the room. It was in a hospital, he was on a chair, and Sara was beside him on a bed.

"You're alive?" he croaked, "I thought you were dead."

Sara shook her head very slowly, "As far as I know, I never died."

Everything came flooding back to him. They had saved Sara; she had been all right except for a few broken bones. They had called an ambulance just in case, and she had been kept for observation overnight. Everything else had been just a dream, a very long, realistic dream. More like a nightmare actually than a dream.

He took her hand and pressed it to his lips.

"I love you Sara, I love you more than anything or anyone else I have ever known."

Tears of joy filled her eyes, "I thought you'd never say it. At least not out loud."

"I am so sorry," Gil kissed her hand again, "I should have told you a long time ago. I should have told you when I first knew it was true."

"I wasn't exactly open about my feelings either," Sara reminded him, "I never told _you_ I loved you. But it doesn't matter anymore. That was all in the past."

"Okay, but from now on we'll be completely honest with each other and say everything we're feeling."

"Okay." Sara said through a yawn.

"How long have you been awake? You need rest, go back to sleep."

"Only about ten minutes," she smiled brightly up at him, "and I don't want to. Not without you anyway."

"I'm right here," Gil pointed out, "You aren't without me."

Sara giggled a sound she rarely ever made. She would laugh and chuckle, but giggling was rare. Grissom liked it when she giggled, she sounded so adorable.

"I meant without you in the bed," Sara explained, "Not in a chair two feet away from me. Now come here."

She grabbed his hand and pulled him into bed.

"Sara," he warned, "I don't think the hospitals approve of this kind of behaviour."

"It's not like we're going to make love right here in the hospital, we're just sleeping."

He knew he shouldn't, knew that he could get kicked out. Or worse, hurt Sara. But it was too tempting. She was lying there in a nice warm bed, and if he didn't join her he would have to sleep in his chair, if he was able to sleep at all. So he gave in and took off his shoes before lying down next to her. Sara snuggled up right against him.

"I love you too you know," she told him.

"I know. I've always known."

Sara smiled against his shoulder, where her head was currently buried.

"Put your arms around me," she said, "make me feel safe."

"But what if I hurt you?" Grissom asked.

"You won't, I promise."

So he listened to her and gently wrapped his arms around her slim waist. Within seconds he was clinging to her like a life preserver, so happy that she wasn't dead after all.

"'Night." she whispered, and went out like a light.

It took him a moment or two to realise it, but he knew that this time, everything really was going to be all right. And with that thought, he drifted off to sleep with Sara in his arms and against his body.

* * *

I originally wasn't going to put the happy ending in, but I just couldn't stand killing off both Sara _and_ Grissom. So I put that bit in, hope it didn't ruin the fic for 'ya.

So, for every reveiw I get, Grissom and Sara will do one of the following; kiss, hug, say their "I love you"'s or hold hands.Damn, I wish I could actually control that. But reveiw and you never know, maybe it'll actually happen.

BrookeGreene


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